Текст книги "Lost"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

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Seven o’clock, lots of things to do, not least of which is a very frank discussion with Kelly over breakfast. Or maybe I’ll wait until we’re in the car. She’s got a job at Macy’s for the summer—the cosmetics counter—and that will give us twenty minutes or so to discuss the new boyfriend, see if I can figure out how serious it is.

Kitchen or car, one way or the other we’ll sort it out.

In my bathrobe, hair still damp, I knock on Kelly’s door. Part of my job, playing rooster.

The unlocked door swings open.

“Kel? Rise and shine.”

At first I can’t comprehend what I’m seeing. Her bed is already made, throw pillows in place. Not possible, not at this hour.

“Kelly?”

That’s when I see the note. A note prominently displayed on her desk, held down by her South Park pencil holder. A note written in her usual florid felt tip, abbreviated as if it were e-mail.

Don’t worry, Mom, it’s not what u think. Something came up. Will call u 2morrow at high noon. Luv u tigers and tons(really!),

K.

She’s gone. Run away.

5. Somebody Special

The way Roy Whittle figures, there’s white man crazy and there’s Indian crazy. Both are bad, but Indian crazy is worse ‘cause in his opinion Indians are all crazy to begin with. Your average swamp injun is a few shy of a load for starters. Add liquor and syphilis and crazy ain’t far behind.

“You figure Ricky’s lost it?” Roy asks his brother.

Dug is driving, bumping their brand-new Dodge Ram over the rutted road that leads to the old airfield. He shoots a puzzled look at his brother. “Huh?” Dug not being one to jump into conversation without prodding.

“Acting weird,” Roy says. “The big chief. Ricky Lang.”

Dug shrugs. “Can’t say.”

They’re fraternal twins, but it’s always seemed to Roy that he got all the words, the conversational ability and most of the brains. You can’t say Dug is simple, exactly, not if you don’t want him pounding you, but he’s not a man given to speaking much, or expressing opinions. Or other normal stuff like reading a little and planning ahead—Roy does that for the both of them.

“Ricky pays us,” Dug points out, nodding to himself in satisfaction, having solved the question.

“Yep, he does.” Roy sighs. Might as well be talking to himself. But he can’t let go of the idea that Ricky has been acting peculiar. For instance his recent Superman talk. Staring at Roy with his hard little eyes and saying he can see into his head, he’s got X-ray vision. Like he can read Roy’s mind. A scary thought indeed.

When the big man first approached them, Roy thought it was strange, a Nakosha sachem wanting to hire a couple of local white boys. But when he’d explained the situation with his tribe, and what he intended to do about it, it sort of made sense that he needed outside help. Any reservations Roy had got erased by the offer of a new truck with a legal title, insurance paid for, the whole bit. Plus cash money in the very near future. But the last few days he had occasion to wonder if maybe Ricky wasn’t, when you got right down to it, bat-shit crazy. At the very least he was totally unpredictable, and that made him dangerous.

Roy vows to be extra damn careful with Ricky Lang, truck or no truck, money or no money.

They come around the last snaky turn in the old logging road. Ahead is the airfield, wide and clear. Not paved, because paving would draw too much attention, but scraped and leveled and hard-rolled, and suitable for everything but the very largest aircraft. Five thousand feet from end to end, straight as a string. A much improved version of the old, rutted clearing where, once upon a time, smugglers limped in, flying wheezy old DC-3 Dakotas loaded with bales of whatever, no runway lights to guide them other than a few pools of smoky kerosene set afire. Wild times that more or less ended before Roy and Dug were old enough to participate.

Unlike their poor pappy, who died in Raiford Correctional, basting in his own bitter juices.

Don’t trust nobody, boys, least of all yur so-called frens.

That was Pappy’s only song, for years before he died. How he was ratted by friends and associates and blood relatives. A long story, partly true, mostly bull. The sad fact was, the old man was the last in a long line of willing rats, with nobody left to rat out. Boys who started out jacking gators ended up rich, wrecking fifty-thousand-dollar Jaguars on backcountry roads for the sheer stupid fun of it, until they were spent out, broke, back in the cracker swamplands where they started.

Roy, twenty-four years old and barely out of the same neck of the Everglades, has no intention of going back, not without a wad of cash in his pocket. Enough for him and Dug to live decent. And near as he can figure, Ricky Lang is the man to back, moneywise. That is, if he don’t go totally squirrel.

“What we do?” Dug wants to know, gazing at the empty airfield.

“Ricky wants us to wait,” Roy explains, patient as always. He’d started out life five minutes ahead, is still waiting for his brother to catch up.

“Huh? Wait for what?”

“Somebody’s coming,” Roy says. He opens the glove compartment, takes out his brand-new ten mil Auto Glock 20 with the fifteen-round magazine. “Somebody special.”

6. Worse Than Sex

Fern has been my best friend since the first day of first grade. She sealed the deal by finding my shoes. Brand-new shoes strapped onto my pudgy little feet by my mother barely an hour before a group of marauding third-graders—big as invading Huns to me—knocked me down on the playground, pulled up my dress and threw my brand-new shoes into the woods behind the school.

There must have been adults overseeing us, but I have no recollection of that. All I remember is being devastated. Destroyed. These were the shoes I’d insisted on when shopping for my new school outfits. Expensive, from the way my mom pursed her lips and looked worried, but I’d made a fuss and she’d given in. Now the precious shoes were gone. I couldn’t go into the school barefoot—mortal shame—and I couldn’t go home. I was lost. The new world of first grade had ended before it even began.

I cried so hard I couldn’t see. And then this big girl came out of the fog of tears, a lovely girl three years older than me, with bright, beautiful, almond-shaped green eyes and wonderfully curly hair. She put her arm around my shoulders and helped me smooth down my dress and promised to find my shoes. She did find them, and helped me strap them on, and twenty-five years later whenever I get irritated with Fern, or find her wearisome, I think of the shoes, and that seals the deal all over again.

So it’s Fern who gets the first distress call.

“Kelly ran away,” I say, my voice breaking. “With a boy.”

“Oh, Jane! No way! I have to sit down.”

Fern has the wireless, carries it to her favorite chair, the soft leather recliner that belonged to her ex-husband. Poor Edgar. A sweet guy but no match for Fern, not in marriage, not in divorce, not in life. I know she’s using Edgar’s old chair because I recognize the sound of the squeaking springs as she settles in, pushes back, lifting her size-ten feet. “There,” she says. “Tell me everything.”

I try, but naturally, Fern being Fern, she interrupts long before everything gets told. “So you’re telling me Kelly stayed out all night and skipped out on her summer job? Welcome to the club, Jane.”

“But she’s never—”

“That you know of. Please. She’s sixteen. Everything but their name is a lie. Sometimes the name, too. I got these calls for Cheyenne? Frat boys looking for Cheyenne. Is that like a stripper name? Jessica was calling herself Cheyenne at some club, gave out her home number. Unbelievable. Jess has a tested IQ of one thirty-five, but at clubs it apparently drops to about sixty-five.”

“So you’re telling me not to worry.”

“No, no, no. Be very worried. Just don’t think you’re alone.”

“But what if she’s having sex?” I ask plaintively.

That gets a laugh out of Fern. Laughter so hearty it seems to warm the receiver on my phone. “If, Jane? Did you say if? Of course she’s having sex! Why else would she stay out all night with Smike?”

“Seth. His name is Seth.”

“He told Kelly his name is Seth and she told you. He could be Smike for all you know. Or Squeers. Or Snagsby. Probably something with an S. Like Sex.”

Fern is riffing now, trying to make me laugh. I know what she’s doing, but I can’t help responding, and my heart unclenches. A big, tension-relieving sigh and anxiety begins to recede like the tide.

It’s so much easier on the phone. If Fern was here I’d be worried she’d see the tears in my eyes and go all soft, and then we’d both be blubbering.

“I hate it that they grow up,” I tell her, taking a deep breath.

“No you don’t,” she responds. “Not so many years ago you were praying she’d get the chance to grow up. Your prayers were answered.”

“True.”

“The miracle kid. She’s a character. They broke the mold. What a personality she has! If the average person has a hundred watts, Kelly has five hundred, all of it beaming. One day she’ll make you proud, but right now all she wants to do is blow your mind. And maybe Smike’s little thingy.”

“Fern! Please!”

“His little mind, too.”

Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while, after we’ve both enjoyed a few moments of silent communion, she goes, “So, you got a battle plan?”

“Grounding doesn’t seem to mean much.”

“Means nothing. Not unless you can lock ‘em up and throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare some sense into her.”

“And how do I do that?”

“With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.”

“You can do that, make your face go white?”

“Years of practice scaring my own mother.”

“I can’t fake a heart attack, Fern.”

“A seizure then. That’s easier. All you gotta do is drool.”

I’m crying now, but tears of laughter.

“It’ll be okay,” Fern says, shifting to serious. “You’ll see. Kelly’s a good soul. She’ll know what to do, even if you don’t.”

“You really think so?”

“I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?”

I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left a contact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her.

Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite new, very slick.

Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.

7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow

Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time—Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.

The thing about it was, the memory Roy savors, he and Dug got to pretty much run wild because Pappy was off doing whatever he did, and their momma went to the bingo, and the Whittle boys were left to their own devices. They didn’t have money for rides or cotton candy, so they took to sneaking into the sideshow tents. Crawling under the heavy canvas, flat on their bellies, the smell of wet grass in their faces. Saw Howard Huge, the blubbery fat man, big as a whale and sitting on a scale that proved he weighed a thousand pounds. Saw a boy using a hammer to drive big spikes up his nose, which Dug thought was funny—it was a rare thing, hearing his brother laugh out loud—and a skinny old woman with really disgusting scaly skin calling herself the Real Fiji Mermaid.

What Roy remembers best though, is getting hypnotized. This man in a shiny black suit and western string tie, the Amazing Mizmar, had the ability to control minds not his own. Picking folks out of the little audience for his famous experiment in mass hypnosis, he’d pointed out Dug to his pretty assistant, but Dug wouldn’t have none of it. He wasn’t one for talking to strangers, or drawing attention. So Roy took his place up on the stage with the other victims, all of them looking pretty sheepish, and then the Amazing Mizmar produced this truly amazing device, a glittery little ball on the end of a wand. He clicked the wand and the glittery ball shot pulses of light. Alluring, rhythmic pulses that blended in with the Amazing Mizmar’s sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow, frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy looked around, delighted—he’d never seen snow—and then set about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake up at the sound—a sharp hand clap—he tried resisting. Wanted to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow.

Roy still has his “between” moments and this is one of them. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of their new Dodge Ram, Dug nods off as they wait, and Roy studies the shimmering waves of heat that rise from the white runway. Makes the air look like pulsing, transparent jelly. With that and the regular sound of Dug breathing heavy through his nose, Roy can almost hear the drone of the Amazing Mizmar’s voice, he can almost see through the heat-shimmered air into some other place.

Almost but not quite, because Ricky Lang pulls him back into the big bad world. Yanks open the door and pokes Roy with an index finger that feels like a warm steel rod in the ribs.

“Wake up,” says Ricky.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” says Roy. “I’m keeping watch.”

Ricky, studying him from behind his mirrored sunglasses. Nodding to himself. “Uh-huh. Whatever. What you watching for, Roy?”

“Like you said. A plane.”

Ricky’s face untightens, and he smiles with just his lips. “Good. The specific aircraft we’re expecting, that would be a Beechcraft King Air 350. Twin turboprops. Color, green and silver. Tail number ends in seven, my lucky number.”

“Yes, sir,” says Roy. He’s tried nudging Dug, but Dug is deeply asleep, and he’s worried about how it looks, his brother snoozing while the boss is giving instructions.

“Leave him be,” Ricky suggests. “Don’t matter if he sleeps through the end of the world. This is on you, not your retarded brother.”

“Dug ain’t retarded.”

“Whatever’s wrong with him, that’s not my concern. You got the Glock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know how to fire it? How to get the safety off, rack a bullet into the chamber, all that?”

Roy nods. He’s pretty sure he knows all that.

“Good,” says Ricky. “Then you know how to leave the safety on, how not to fire it.”

“What’re you saying?” Roy asks.

“I’m saying the gun is for show. Don’t shoot nobody is what I’m saying.”

“Okay,” says Roy. “I won’t.”

“Good. Little while, the aircraft will circle the field. It will land from the east, over there,” Ricky says, indicating where the long runway blends into the low scrub pine. “It will taxi to us. First thing you do, when the engines shut down, you come around from behind and put the chocks under the wheels. Think you can do that?”

“I guess.”

“Make sure you come at it from the back of the plane, behind the wing, so you don’t get your fool head cut off by the props.”

“Okay.” Roy files it away, the propellers are dangerous, watch out for the props.

“You just follow my lead,” Ricky says. “Wheels chocked, okay? Next, we get the passengers out of the aircraft. There’s a little door unfolds in the tail, that’s where they’ll exit. Don’t show the gun till their feet’re on the ground.”

“How many passengers?” Roy asks, just to show that he’s always thinking.

“One or two,” Ricky says, indifferent to the question. “Whatever, you just hold the Glock on ‘em. Don’t say nothing, just look like you mean it. Don’t let ‘em go back in the plane but don’t shoot ‘em. I’m doing all the shooting.”

Roy follows Ricky to his BMW, parked nearby. Dirt adheres to the lower panels, fouling the hubs, probably messing up the brakes, too. Waste of a good car, Roy thinks, not meant for the backcountry. And then Ricky Lang, his scary new boss, Ricky the crazy damn injun who is going to change Roy’s life, he pops open the BMW trunk, produces an oversize, odd-looking rifle. Almost a crossbow look to it, fitted out with some sort of dartlike powerhead.

“What’s that?” Roy wants to know.

“Animal tranquilizers,” Ricky explains. Showing his white teeth in a killer grin. “Works on people, too.”

8. Jumping Into The Bare Blue Sky

There are some things your eyes refuse to see. Sights unimaginable, or so out of context your brain can’t make sense of them. That’s how it is with Kelly’s secret photo album. I’m looking right at the pictures and still it doesn’t make any sense. What would my daughter be doing on a runway, near a small airplane? Why is she grinning so mischievously? What is she holding up to the camera, some sort of backpack?

I know what it is but find it hard to even think the word, let alone speak it aloud.

Parachute.

Must be a joke. She’s kidding around. Like those old trick photos on Coney Island, where you stick your head through a hole in the canvas and pretend to be a cowboy on a painted horse. Like that.

More photos. Kelly climbing into the little airplane, wearing a baggy jumpsuit and what looks like a crash helmet. Kelly crouching inside the plane, giving a thumbs-up. Kelly buddied-up with a handsome pilot, a young man with dark, soulful eyes, gorgeous hair and white, white teeth. I didn’t really get a good look at the guy on the motorcycle, but something about the way this young man holds himself erect, good posture even sitting down, something makes me think this might be Seth.

If so, he’s way too old for a girl of sixteen. Old enough to be a pilot—how old is that? Has to be at least twenty-one, right? Or is it younger? Hard to say—they both look so pleased with themselves, and happiness makes you look younger. Whatever his age, no way is he in high school with my daughter. He’s not a school kid. No droopy drawers and skateboards for him. He’s into airplanes, motorcycles, high-speed machines.

Have him arrested, that’s my first dark impulse. Send this handsome, grinning man to jail. How dare he take my daughter up in a small plane without my permission? How could he let her jump into the bare blue sky. What was he thinking?

Because I know what comes next, even before I flip the page. A shot of Kelly waving bye-bye from the open door. Pale sky all around her. A wobbly, slightly blurred shot of an open parachute, a slim figure dangling beneath it. Then the reunion on the ground, with Kelly looking triumphant as she folds up her colorful parachute. A parachute that looks about as substantial as the silk scarves displayed next to her counter at Macy’s.

It feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule. At the same time, in some weird way, everything has gone numb. How could I have been so stupid, not to have had an inkling of what was going on with this boy? Never knew he existed until yesterday, and yet he and my daughter have, obviously, been executing a series of death-defying stunts. No doubt there’s more going on than motorcycles and parachute jumps.

Suddenly, whether or not Kelly has decided to have sex is a lot less important than the fact that she’s risking her life to impress an older, thrill-seeking boyfriend. Save that hogwash about skydiving being as safe as going to the supermarket. If my purse doesn’t open, I don’t end up embedded in the concrete, okay? When I make a mistake parallel parking, do I drift into the high-tension wires? No. Skydiving is about certain death being averted at the last possible moment, that’s what makes it exciting. I may be a stick-in-the-mud, the type who always fastens her seat belt, but I know that much.

When Kelly calls with whatever lame excuse she’s cooked up, what should I do? What can I say that won’t make it worse? Fern’s idea of chaining her to the radiator is starting to sound reasonable. I’m at a complete loss here, but whatever I decide to do, it means clearing my calendar for today. No way can I meet with clients, or deal with Alex over lunch.

First call is to Alex. Unfortunately, I get him, not the machine. “Janey doll,” he says, chipper as ever. “I have you down for Cholo’s at one.”

“I’ve got to cancel,” I tell him. “My daughter.”

“The divine Miss Kelly? Is she okay?”

Just like that I spill the beans. Everything, more or less. Alex makes all the usual sympathetic noises, but he sounds slightly impatient. “So your daughter has a boyfriend, Jane. It’s not the end of the world.”

“She ran away! She’s jumping out of airplanes!”

“She left a note,” he reminds me. “She’ll call. And by the way, more people get struck by lightning than die while skydiving.”

“She’s a child!”

“No,” Alex says firmly. “Kelly is no longer a child.”

I could strangle him. How dare he?

“She’s a totally amazing woman,” Alex concludes. “Very much like you.”

It’s a great relief when my accountant doesn’t pick up and I’m able to leave a message about the quarterlies. Ditto for my contact person at East Coast Wedding Wholesalers, imploring them to put a trace on the Norbert and Spinelli orders. Both calls seem to take a tremendous effort on my part, as if merely thinking about work is exhausting. Luckily Tracy has her schedule and can take care of herself, workwise, because I can’t bear the thought of another phone call. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so hollow and shaky?

Food. Haven’t eaten since I got up and discovered Kelly gone. And I’m one of those people who simply must have something in her stomach in the morning—must be a blood-sugar thing.

That’s probably why my hands are shaking when my cell phone rings. I’m thinking it can’t be Kelly—it’s not quite noon and she never calls early—but that’s her name glowing on the little screen.

“Kelly honey? Where are you?”

There’s a delay, a pause, long enough so I’m almost convinced the connection has been broken. Then her voice comes through. Not her bright, confident chatty voice. Her whispering voice, as if she doesn’t want to be overheard. As if she might be afraid.

“Mom, I need your help. Please call—”

That’s it. The call cuts off in mid-sentence. No static, no nothing. Just a final, overwhelming silence.

9. Watching The Detectives

Kelly and I watch a lot of movies. Started out with kiddy stuff, of course. When she was hospitalized or enduring chemo, movies were an escape, a way to avoid the harsh reality of our situation. Early on I stopped worrying about how a violent or racy scene might affect her. When an eight-year-old stares death in the face every day, can you tell her she can’t watch a car chase, or cartoonish villains firing automatic weapons at infallible heroes, or someone saying a bad word?

Some parents did. Not me. Kelly wouldn’t let me. If a movie had a kid with cancer in it—not many did, actually—she always insisted on seeing it. Even if the child died. As she told me, her face screwed up with righteous indignation, she knew plenty of real children who had really died. Okay, four or five at least, which is way more than the average kid. So a character dying in a movie was no big thing to her. It was pretend. Sometimes she’d cry, but that was because it was a sad story, not because she thought the actor really died.

Movies were movies and life was life, and they were connected, but not in a scary way. Not for my Kel. And we’ve continued our habit of watching films together. Lately I’ve had to keep my comments to myself, so as not to endure her “please, Mom, give it a rest” reactions, but we still screen two or three movies a week, more if she’s in the mood.

One of her favorites is The Usual Suspects. That comes to mind because I’m waiting in a Nassau County Police Department office, at the Fifth Precinct, in the Village of Valley Stream. My very first visit, although I’ve often driven past the building. From the outside it’s a blocky, innocuous kind of place, plain as a potato. Inside it’s all cop, purposeful and a bit macho—a banner declares “The Fighting Fifth”—though it’s a lot less frantic than what you see on TV.

Detective Jay Berg has a cork bulletin board behind his desk and that’s what reminds me of The Usual Suspects. Kevin Spacey staring at the stuff on the bulletin board, using it to make up a story. Not that Detective Berg thinks I’m making up a story about a girl, a boy and a motorcycle.

“We treat every missing minor report seriously,” he intones, tenting his fingers together as if in prayer. He’s a pleasant-looking guy, very earnest, with a thinning widow’s peak and jowls that make him look just a tiny bit like Kevin Spacey, which is probably what got me started, come to think of it. “Even when the minor may have left of her own accord, we take it seriously,” he says. “Runaways are still missing, however it started.”

Not for the first time I remind him, “She didn’t run away. Something’s wrong.”

“It’s always wrong when a minor leaves parental custody.”

“She called. Said she needed my help. But when I called back her phone was off and I got her voice mail. That’s not like Kelly. She never shuts her cell off.”

He nods sympathetically. Giving the impression that he’s counseled many an upset parent out here in the not-so-peaceful suburbs. “Very troubling,” he says. “Naturally you’re upset. I would be, too. As I said, that’s why we’re issuing a Be On The Lookout. Your daughter’s photograph and description will be circulated throughout the tri-state area. Local police, county police, state police, within the hour they’ll know to be on the lookout for Kelly Garner.”

“What about TV news?”

He leans back in his chair, touching his prayerful fingers to his plump and dimpled chin. “We can’t compel the media to run the story, but they will get the BOLO, and then it’s up to them. Absent any indication that she’s been abducted, they may or may not use it.”

“What about an AMBER Alert?”

Berg sighs. He’s been waiting for that question, and he’s ready with an answer. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Garner, the AMBER system has been effective precisely because it’s reserved for child abduction cases. Your daughter left home on her own accord. There’s no indication of abduction. I really do expect she’ll call you as soon as the excitement wears off.”

“She did call!” I say, exasperated. “She’s in trouble, I could hear it in her voice. I’m sorry I don’t know the boyfriend’s last name—I feel really stupid about that, okay?—but that doesn’t mean this isn’t an emergency.”

More sympathetic nods from the detective. “Of course it doesn’t. The fact is, we are treating this as an emergency. Believe me, all police officers take this kind of thing seriously. Many have daughters of their own. They know what you’re going through, Mrs. Garner. You can be sure they’ll study the BOLO and they will in fact be very much on the lookout. As I said before, if you had a probable destination, or a point of origin, or a make and model of a motor vehicle or motorcycle, we could start from there.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I feel so stupid.” No matter how hard I try, another spasm of weeping comes along every few minutes. Detective Berg has thoughtfully provided a box of tissues and my lap is full of wadded-up Kleenex.

“You’re not stupid, Mrs. Garner,” he assures me. “Believe me, the parent is often the last to know. And if this guy your daughter is seeing is over eighteen, as you suspect, he might even face charges.”

“I don’t care about that. I just want her back, safe and sound.” “Of course. But there are legal ramifications. Let me read you the statute,” he says, picking up a card from the desk. “If the victim is under fifteen and the perpetrator is at least eighteen, this constitutes a second degree sexual offense. However, if the defendant is less than four years older than the victim, this may constitute an affirmative defense.’”

“What’s an ‘affirmative defense’?”

Berg reads from the back of the card. “‘Affirmative defenses are those in which the defendant introduces evidence which negates criminal liability.’”

“Meaning he gets away with it? Taking advantage?”

The detective shrugs. “The legal age of consent in the state of New York is seventeen. Your daughter is sixteen, so it depends on how much older he is. If he’s thirty, he can and probably will be prosecuted. If he’s twenty or under, probably not, unless your daughter testifies that he forced himself on her.”

“Oh God.” The whole thing feels like it’s spinning out of control. All this talk about criminal liability and prosecutable offenses, all I want is for Kelly to be okay. And I want every cop in the known universe out looking for my daughter. I want them a lot more proactive than Be On The Lookout.

“I told you the boy is a pilot. Can’t he be traced that way? Can’t I look at pictures, pick him out?”

“You already have a photo of the guy,” he reminds me. “We’ll post it with the BOLO.”

“A picture but no name. Can’t you like run it through a computer or something?”

Berg chuckles. “Like on TV? Face-recognition software isn’t that precise, not in the real world. Plus, you’d have to get access to the right database. But there might be someone who can help.” He rummages around in a desk drawer, hands me a card. “Never met this guy, but he comes highly recommended.”

I check out the business card. Just a name, title and phone number. Nothing fancy. “Says here he’s retired,” I say, feeling stunned.